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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26493928">Messiah complex</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sionnan/pseuds/Sionnan'>Sionnan</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, canon compliant eating disorder, various flavors of messiah complex</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 12:00:16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,801</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26493928</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sionnan/pseuds/Sionnan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Mac and Dennis both have messiah complexes. Dennis favors the “dying martyr” approach, while Mac appreciates the “benevolent protector” trope.</p><p>Or, one time how Mac rescues Dennis from his own body dysmorphia.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Dennis</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It’s not exactly as if they’re able to go too often without really knowing what the other was doing. But Dennis had spent long enough hiding pieces of himself from Mac’s unerringly accurate ability to discern what was going on with his best bro, that while this was a bit awkward and unexpected, it wasn’t entirely unprecedented.</p>
<p>Dennis had been quieter and more subdued over the last week, pale and seemingly weaker and weaker by the day. He explained the vaguely self-involved questioning by Dee, Charlie, and his father that he had the flu– accompanied by a quick withdrawal and the demand that Dennis be quarantined from the bar. The last few of those days had seen Mac checking Dennis’ temperature with the inside of his wrist, and when that hadn’t yielded satisfactory results, he pressed the sensitive skin of his lips to Dennis’ clammy forehead.</p>
<p>So he’d gone back to his apartment, drawn the drapes in his room, laid down in the diffuse light, and thought of nothing. That was the key, right?</p>
<p>There was nothing to aspire to, nothing to achieve, and the whole of their lives, of this sad little bar in this sad little city, amounted to nothing.</p>
<p>He wasn’t particularly sad about this revelation. It hit him like a bank of fog, enveloping him and obscuring everything around him with the same featureless, flat haze. Periods of noise indicated Mac had come home, with the guy himself occasionally intruding in Dennis’ solitude with a knock or a direct yell.</p>
<p>Dennis had taken to locking his room and putting on the chain. After a while, Dennis assumed, in the part of his brain that was not filled with the cottony haze, that Mac must have given up the idea that Dennis was in apartment at all.</p>
<p>He wasn’t sure how long it was before he heard the door being assaulted in steady, aggressive and enthusiastic heel kicks, paired with Mac’s distinctive tenor raised in alarm. What a fool. Dennis had changed the locks a long time ago to prevent unexpected intrusion.</p>
<p>Mac learned this the hard way when the tempo of his kicks faltered with a burst of pained swearing. There was a length of silence again, just long enough to make Dennis think Mac had given up for good, when the door literally began splintering apart.</p>
<p>Denis jerked at the sound, turning just enough so that he could see the edge of the crowbar wedged under where it had made short work of the door lock, and was being levered enough to make the chain attachment groan.</p>
<p>There were times that Dennis was reminded, unironically, that Mac had studied martial arts for a number of years, and actually had a freakishly attuned mind-body attachment. Dee was wont to call it his crazy retard strength, but Dennis knew that once Mac was truly in the zone with something, he could accomplish some truly astonishing physical feats.</p>
<p>He had once watched Mac consume a ghost pepper in one go without breaking into a sweat. He hadn’t even been high or drunk when he did it. He had just stated that by channeling his qi, he would be able to ignore the intense physical pain through mental and spiritual concentration.</p>
<p>Later, he had showed off the disgusting blisters (that required a trip to the hospital several days after) that had blossomed on his tongue. (Dennis had massaged Mac to a soft orgasm to distract him from that particular pain, when they had come back from the hospital, and Mac had been leaking silent tears of pain.)</p>
<p>The door was open.</p>
<p>Mac stood framed by a brilliant halo of light, a black silhouette against a dazzle of midday sun. Dennis wretched weakly, partly from the exertion of turning and partly from the sudden spike of pain in his head from the lance of the sun.</p>
<p>“Oh my god. Dennis, dude!” Mac’s voice was suddenly and completely clear, blowing away a wave of fog. “Fuck, it smells like a concentration camp in here.”</p>
<p>Dennis smiled softly to himself, letting his head fall back to the mattress. Mac was here. Everything would be fine.</p>
<p>He fell into the first deep, spontaneous sleep his body would allow since he had left the bar.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Mac</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Mac finds Dennis.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mac had finished his shift at the bar by coming back to the apartment, taking a good long look at Dennis’ door, and deciding that no matter what standing house rules there were about Dennis room (chief among them, do not attempt entry if both locks were engaged), he was going to figure out what the fuck was going on.</p><p>it didn’t take a genius to figure out Dennis was in there. He could sometimes hear Dennis shift around on his bed as though to find a comfortable position (enough times sleeping with or near Dennis had given him insight onto what particular sounds his body made as it moved), or occasionally a throaty gag that made Mac wince. It really did sound like the dude had the stomach flu. Normally Mac would be all up in there there it was nobody’s business, but again: locks engaged, don’t engage.</p><p>So he had left Dennis alone. And as long as he knew where specifically Dennis was, he didn’t need to make direct contact with him. So he refrained (for like, a hundred times) calling Dennis’ phone or texting him while Mac was at the bar, or while he was at the store picking up groceries.</p><p>Respect was key, and they had a long standing agreement to let each other have some time to work out issues before they stepped in.</p><p>It was four days of the locked door treatment before Mac decided it was time for an intervention. When the sounds of Dennis moving around had dwindled from walking around his room, to shifting on his mattress, to occasional, anemic gagging, Mac started to get panicked.</p><p>(Mac was always worried. But he was working on not being so overbearing about that, especially with Dee coaching him to not be “riding Dennis’ dick” about everything. Whatever that meant.)</p><p>He came home the final day to Dennis’ door still locked. Usually after a day or two of this, Dennis would be languishing on the couch, sometimes with a bit of dried vomit crusted at the corners of his lips, barely conscious but somehow blissful. Mac would come over with two wet washcloths, one to drape over Dennis’ forehead, and the other to gingerly wipe at the corners of his mouth.</p><p>Then he would spend the next 12 hours getting Dennis back into some semblance of his own mind. It was kind of scary how much he would lose himself during these episodes, and how fragile and weak he seemed when he came out of them. Usually by the time Dennis was strong enough to pop half a boner in front of the softcore porn channels, he was alert enough to know where and who he was.</p><p>But it had been 4 days, and Mac figured he had exhibited enough patience to earn himself a sainthood, if he died from result of the stress of all this. Enough with being patient, enough with being understanding.</p><p>He was gonna get some fucking answers.</p><p>He wrested his crowbar out of his closet where it had been gathering dust from the last time he and Charlie had broken into the abandoned brewery to see if there were any kegs left, and went back to Dennis’ room.</p><p>Silence. The only sound was the English dubbed Bruce Lee movie he had abandoned in favor of Dennis rousting. But he’d take the soft approach first. He leaned against the door, and called, “Dennis? You in there, man?”</p><p>Nothing.</p><p>So he pushed himself off and considered the door. He drew in a deep breath, and centered himself. Then he dropped into a horse stance, and lunged at the door with his forward leg. Beyond the protesting wood, he heard the mattress shift under Dennis’ weight, and felt reassured that he was at least responsive to stimuli.</p><p>“I’m comin’, buddy,” he muttered under his breath, as he shifted again to strike where the door lock met the frame, and instead felt a sharp stab of pain run from his heel up to his hip. “Motherfucker!”</p><p>He collapsed against the opposite wall, holding his shin. Dennis must have changed the lock into some kind of freakishly reinforced ultra-secure system. That was probably after Mac had broken down his door for the third time. Served him right, he supposed.</p><p>Time for Mr. Business. He lifted the crowbar from where he had left it on the floor, and aimed a solid blow where the door lock was supposed to be, awarded with a satisfying crack that left a gouge in the wood.</p><p>They’d have to replace the door, he thought distantly, behind a growing wall of panic. He got the door wobbly enough so that he could pry the lock apart, and then snap the lock holding right off the door.</p><p>Dennis’ room was dark, and had the musk of unwashed sweat, despair, and frailty. Dennis was, as he predicted, on his bed, his head just barely lifted enough to see him. Mac heard himself blurt, “Oh my god. Dude, it smells like a concentration camp in here.” Too late, Mac remembered Dennis’ familial attachment to Nazis, and wondered abruptly if Dennis’ periodic “fastings” had something to do with that realized horror.<br/>In the sudden silence, Dennis gagged weakly. The dude had a ridiculously strong gag reflex; Mac knew from experience.</p><p>He looked as if he had lost 10 pounds in the intervening 4 days since Mac had seen him. Which probably wasn’t unthinkable, the dude had a habit of dropping large amounts of weight unexpectedly.</p><p>Across the room, Mac could see Dennis’ eyes, dull and glassy, watch him as though Mac were some kind of hero. Mac felt himself swell uncomfortably under that gaze, a twinge of inappropriate appreciation for that look of awe and gratefulness.</p><p>And then the dude fucking passed out.</p><p>“Jesus, man.” Mac stepped in, past small piles of stinking throw up, to kneel on the bed next to Dennis and check his pulse. It was fast and thready. But he couldn’t do anything for his bro while they were in here.</p><p>So he looped one arm under Dennis’s crooked knees, feeling the pale, soft skin under the stretch of prominent sinews, and the other arm under Dennis’ shoulders, and lifted him. The other man folded in his arms like a tired child.</p><p>Mac stood, hardly feeling the strain at all with the bounding of blood in his veins. “It’s okay, man. I’m gonna take care of you, buddy,” he said softly, and took his charge out of that hellish room.</p>
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